


If I Cannot Fly

by mizface



Series: Linnet Bird [6]
Category: Canadian 6 Degrees, Harper's Island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-07
Updated: 2011-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:33:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizface/pseuds/mizface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for a ds_snippets challenge and betaed by lucifuge5.  Title comes from <i>Sweeney Todd</i> lyrics.</p><p>Spoilery for the series, post-series AU</p>
    </blockquote>





	If I Cannot Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a ds_snippets challenge and betaed by lucifuge5. Title comes from _Sweeney Todd_ lyrics.
> 
> Spoilery for the series, post-series AU

Madison was nine or ten when she read a book about birds, and one fact in particular stuck in her memory. It was about cuckoos. She didn’t remember it because of the bird’s silly name or sillier associations.

When Madison read that cuckoos sometimes laid their eggs in other birds’ nests and then just left them there, abandoning them to be raised by the wrong parents like feathered changelings, it struck a chord in her. She could see the cuckoo chicks, out of place with the other fledglings, perhaps picked at, or sent away from the nest too soon.

Never fitting in, and maybe never knowing why.

It saddened her, but it also resonated in a way she didn’t understand. At least, not until John found her and showed her just how poorly she fit in the world she was born to. It was eye-opening, captivating and _freeing_ until, like the chicks she’d imagined years before, she was pulled from the nest before she was ready to fly.

The hurt was intense and yet, in some ways the pain didn’t matter, because now she knew, bone deep, the shape and feel of _belonging_.

It had taken twelve years to have it; now that she had, Madison knew she could be patient, rebuild and recreate it. She could make a place for herself, one where she fit.

She had the blueprint now.


End file.
